GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 9:36
And a Little Child Shall Lead Them (Isa. 11:6)
At a restaurant, Alice and I sat beside a couple with two children—a four-year-old girl and a one-month-old baby. The mother held the baby while the father ate; then she handed the baby to her husband, a large, muscular man. The father cradled the child in the crook of his arm, holding him as though he were a delicate piece of fine china—or something equally irreplaceable.
In his Gospel, Mark recounts that Jesus wished to give his followers an illustrated lesson: “And taking a small child, he placed him in their midst and holding him in his arms, he said to them,” (Mark 9:36)
The word “child” is a diminutive noun, and recent translators render the word as “little” or “small child.” Additionally, the word “arms” derives from a compound participle meaning “bent arm” or “embracing.”
One scholar suggested that the house where Jesus stayed belonged to Simon Peter and speculated that the child might have been Peter’s. One early tradition claims the child’s name was Ignatius. These are intriguing suggestions, though not ones to be used as a basis for theology.
So much attention in the Gospels is devoted to Jesus the teacher, that the writers rarely provide glimpses into Jesus the man—the human being. This brief glimpse in Mark’s narrative shows Jesus taking a young child into his arms and embracing him. There’s a softness and tenderness in this picture.
It isn’t overly sentimental to compare the parents’ tenderness toward their baby with Jesus’ embrace of the little child—and with the baby in a manger in this Christmas season.
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